Mist Elf Duelist, R57

[SirTheta]

Previous to this character I'd just ended a nice run on a drakeling something or other with a YASD -- I got slowed to 10 speed by Nurgy and was too rusty to realize "oh I have a blessed SOFS, blessed POCC, and many other ways to get out of this" etc. until it was far too late. Note that this is the second drakeling I've killed this way so you'd think I'd've learned something...But on to the Mist Elf Duelist (my first victory since prerelease 20—so, first time doing the new content like Ice Queen Domain, random dungeons, etc.)

Usual start: SMC (blanket) => Kranach (mist elves have a hella hard time getting gold, so ~3400 [reward, raider corpse, raider lord corpse] is a real nice boost) => PC. And this is where it all changes.

• neutral altar on PC:5, right next to the down stairs
• orc vault on PC:6, right below the up stairs

Easy precrown + crown, at xl8 or so. [double precrown was out of the running this early in the game—mist elves level way too slow]

I go through the usual niceties—get absolutely close, complete the cute dog quest to bump alignment to N+—and obtain what, imo, might be the best artifact for a Mist Elf: fine leather armor "Nature's Companion" (=Fire, =Elec, +15 Sp). Back to PC:5 for crowning (deity feedback is still broken after precrowning, which is kind of annoying) and obtain Kinslayer and =Cold. At this point I'm psyched, especially for the =Cold: I'll probably never need to trade out Nature's Companion for the AMW. The RNG keeps rolling my way because next was DD and Keethrax was standing two tiles away from me on DD:7.

Next: UD => COC (which has perfectly placed pools: one a level above DT and one two levels below DT). Go through the motions on Thrundarr's quest (dark orc) and do some poolsipping while I'm at it. First: doomed. Easily fixed. A couple sips later: water elemental. Surprisingly hard at xl10 or so, especially with the slight HP mist elves had; needed one prayer. Next: +Invis. This is maybe the second time I've been locked out of the arena quest, so my usual progression is out of the window—this'll be a much more interesting game. The pool two levels below DT? +SeeInvis. I'm like never going to use the AMW now.

Next: DH => OC => Dwarven Graveyard (only grabbed elemental gauntlets) => Pyramid => VDDL (successfully mined out the \Tele—my pickaxe held up really well for a while and then I found another one in VDDL which held up even better). At this point I'm at 14/14 St which hasn't budged despite a lot of St training, so clearly this no longer bumps your potential? That really sucks. But I've got TWO !Strength == 18/18 St and I can drop enough to use my class powers. Given I was crowned and had my weapon & body armor set, this was super easy and it was nice to leave (valuable) trash lying on the ground—I think this experience will change the way I usually horde in the early game (to obtain gold for crowning purposes).

Next: Water Temple (actual breeze despite having mid-70s HP and no swimming) => Banshee (jackpot: lots of giants and two dark orc corpses, the latter of which notably budge your potential) => Wall of Flames => surface. On the way to the surface, I picked up +TCtrl well above DT; decided not to backtrack for mystic at that time. I also found TWO !Potential Strength, which I stupidly didn't bless, so I was sitting at 19/22 strength. Note to self: giant corpses are plentiful now, be smart!

Next: DFG. Given my equipment, this stop was all about experience, though I did find the jet-black glaive (triple blech on a duelist: bad weapon past early game, polearm, two-handed).

Next: Ice Queen Domain. Since I wasn't a drakeling this time, I decided to actually experience the Ice Queen Domain. E.g. mining snow golems for xp as I pass through, cracking the IC:1 treasure rooms, grabbing the wand of cold from IC:2 (really needed that) (and killing a werewolf king for super xp on the way through. He almost got me but Kinslayer + Nature's Companion soothes all), killing all the IC:7 prisoners, and getting Kinslayer knocked out on IC:8. I'd immediately blessed it after equipping it on PC:5 and hadn't lost it since so it was quite an impressive run. Talked to the Ice Queen and...

Next: FGJC. FGJC5 is a greater fire vault (the kind with two rings, a central room, and 4 tiny hidden rooms). I clear a few outside monsters before heading to FGJC6 and the fourth fire lizard I kill? He drops a gray cloak. Bag Haggar, grab my POCC (one of which gets shattered by the unhappy ice queen domain from all the killing I've done), kill the chaos diplomat with only two blessed humanoid slaying arrows (seriously though..), and get my +2 St/To/Wi.

This is a good point to note that I've found zero stable morgia patches the entire game and managed to collect a grand total of 4 morgia. So my starting 11/14 To is 12/14 To before the Ice Queen bumps it to 14/14 To. Quite the disappointment.

Next: FGJC5. I need to clear this for xp—I'm about xl21 and my HP is in the 120s: a recipe for insta-death by ACW. It takes 5 POEH, some leaving and coming back, lots of teleportation, and some dragon slaying ammo, but I finally clear everything but the sole great red wyrm (who I so had but then he blind raged and in one turn killed the ancient karmic dragon I'd summoned through a blessed SOFS).

My rewards: xl24 (140 HP!!!), a +9/+6 and a +8/+6 ring of slaying, a [+3, +2] ring of mental stability (boy did that come in handy), TWO rings of ice, a !Strength, and a !Potential Toughness. Also, as I was leaving, a random berserker on FGJC5 dropped worn boots (30s).

Next: TOEF. Used 2x blessed rings of ice until TF:4 since my only gauntlets were cloth. Got xl25 on TF:2 which bumped me to 161 HP (with the water orb, which adds 2-3 HP). On TF:3, I got a surge of power. Guarded by the pushover Tre-Feel the stone golem. 10s gauntlets though—and I don't have Immune to Pain yet because of my toughness situation (I'd used a potion of boost toughness before hitting xl21 to get Stone Skin, but hadn't found another so that I could get Iron Skin). ACW was not a pushover since I was xl25, so I had to use a POCC.

Next: TOTHK => FGJC5. Used a blessed SOFS (another ancient karmic dragon killed pretty quickly), more dragon slaying ammo, and some luck in melee to bag the great red wyrm. The way blind raging works is kind of infuriating—it holds for perpetuity. Yuck.

Next: Mystic (POGA) => past Wall of Flames => ignore Casino => get cats eye ring => do Earth Temple (easy) => resurface to do Air Temple (ridiculously easy) => resurface to do Mino Maze. Now, the Mino Maze. It was a real bear. I'll quote some kills here:

    136 ancient minotaurs
      1 minotaur emperor
     13 minotaur kings
    143 minotaur lords
     25 minotaur mages
     59 minotaur mazelords
    118 minotaur mazemasters

The nice thing is that a mob dropped a silvery arrow on one of the ML2s, and another mob dropped worn boots (30s) on one of the ML4s.

Of course, this wound up being my stupidity, too. I'd read a blessed MM scroll on the real ML5 (I'd had 2—one I read on a fake ML6), missed seeing the downstairs, ascended and kept exploring, and the downstairs to the real ML5? got covered by a single gold piece somehow. As I'd been leaving trash behind in the maze (including gold), I completely missed it and wasted probably 10k turns.

Using some humanoid slaying and my energy reduction from class power / blessed 7LBs, I only got drained by mino mages twice: lost 2 To and some amount of Ch. Given I needed 1x helm of mental stability, 1x ring of mental stability, and 1x ring of the clear mind (== burning skin) to resist their confusion (without the water orb), that was really nice and one of the things that stopped me from giving up.

After exploring all but about two levels (real ML6, real ML7) of the Mino Maze, I resurfaced to milk booze and finish pickpocketing to learn detect traps. Then poolsipped in DFG until I got +Tele—of course, I lost +TCtrl, but that's why I had a =TCtrl stashed. And then I came back with a fully charged \Tele (15 charges). After some further exploring and finally asking for help, Jouni extracted me from my morass (thanks again!!—I'll never forget alt-l again).

So now it's Mino Emp Time. I'm at 22 To thanks to the Earth Orb and I own the Mino Emp with Kinslayer. Unfortuantely he only drops Vanquisher, but that wasn't the real goal here anyway. Resurface, blessed all my POGA (I wind up with 8), drank some blessed !St, drank a blessed !To, ate the Mino Emp. And now I'm at 3 Wi, 20 To, and about 35 St or so. But as you'll recall...no morgia bushes.

Next: the random dungeons. specifically, R5 and R4. Eventually deep in R4 I found a single morgia bush. I had 6 blessed !Water left. Use one: bush sprouts! 5 left. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. 1 left. Bush sprouts!!!!! Praise Balance. So I spend several k turns just relaxing, cultivating my nice farm, and munching morgia as I waited.

Next: Casino. I really needed water, so I robbed the Casino. And killed the shopkeep for xp. Slaying ammo again..

Next: Greater Vault. Giants. I am invisible and have a !Hum weapon. Ate them for brunch.

Next: MT. I had around 16 Wi by the time I got here, so I drained my 8 POGA. I also had 21 To. So now I'm balling with 40+ St, 29 To, 157 Sp, etc. And this is when I realize the AMW is on D:1 because I hadn't needed it. But I've got 100 Alertness and super speed so I decide to say fuck it, I'll just dodge everything. And I do (combined with only being in direct line when I was wailing on him with Kinslayer).

Next: D:50. I just charge right because, dudes, I am quite literally invincible—having recently achieved grand mastery in Swords, my energy cost for attacking is 370. I have 157 Sp with the cats eye ring on (partly from my "sweat blood" corruption and some other corruptions). Balors want to go toe-to-toe? Let's do it. It takes about 6 hits to kill a balor, so they usually get in 1 or 2 attacks. But I got hit only twice in taking out all the regular balors. And even though I could've gone toe-to-toe with Fisty, I just used backstepping to take him out without any danger to myself.

And that's it.

Oh, except on the way to the surface I wasn't paying attention and was just plowing through monsters on berserk. Until I evaded an energy bolt while wailing on this yellow F—talk about an "oh shit." moment. But the ki-rin was at critically injured so it was dispatched the next round.

And my achievements said I killed 95% of the non-unique monsters in the game, so that was interesting—I'm wondering whether that's something that happens in most games or not, given the usual completion for most areas. My gut leans yes.

And lastly: thoughts on talents now that I'm playing a mist elf again. So pleased that the Hardy line definitely works now (I can't remember if they worked in p20 on mist elves). You might not need it in the early game (certainly not as an experienced player), but +3/+9/+18 (cumulative) HP is huge for TOEF and other areas. Hardy line is the best line for mist elves.

FLG below.